To be posted soon in Orange, also

We are all a bit disappointed these days. The Golden age of a Democratic Majority has not panned out, so to speak. The Dems have pretty much given up on doing something meaningful to oppose Bush. The primary is still five months of candidate diaries away …..and people are still dying.

We seem to have no power to do much of anything while we wait for the long year and a quarter until Bush is gone and one of the Dem candidates takes office and …hopefully….begins to fix the huge mess Bush has made of the world and our nation. So it is time for “Lessons Learned” and hopefully time to build a new way for us to be more powerful in the future. The simplest and most obvious way to do that is to become more united in purpose and in focus.

Armando suggests rallying around lobbying Congress, now and in the future.

Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse suggests a bloggers union

After publishing The Big Picture Vol. 1, several commenters suggested a manifesto. Thus was this project launched.

Though agreeing on what we agree on is just a first step, it could be a meaningful one.

From last nights Ask A Kossak…

One of our many Quixotic quests over at Docudharma is ….don’t laugh now!…trying to find ways to bring both the Progressive Blogosphere and progressives in general closer together. Finding ways to unite us, and by uniting us making us more powerful and more effective.

Herding cats from ponyback.

One of the ways we think might be effective is coming up with a very basic and simple (we hope!) list of things we agree on. A manifesto. The internet is full of the things we do not agree on….including whether we need a manifesto or not. But not much is regularly said about what we do agree on. And what we DO agree on is in essence…..who we are.

Agreeing what we agree on is the first tiny step in bringing us closer together, to claiming the power we have….and are not using. Defining the principles and issues that are most important to us can help us focus.

Every Monday for the next few weeks I will publish another diary both here and at Docudharma asking for submissions for YOU! for the manifesto. We will have two categories. Issues and Principles. If you are an organized type of person, go ahead and make a list of your top five or top ten in each category. If you are a more casual person, just throw in whatever ideas you have and we will try our best to collate and rank them.

Then we will start the winnowing process through more diaries asking y’all to vote on the lists we end up with.

Tonight’s questions are meant to get you thinking, PLEASE DO NOT FEEL LIKE IF YOU DO NOT PARTICIPATE TONIGHT YOU WILL MISS OUT. There will be plenty of chances to submit your …..submissions. This is just a primer to get you thinking. If something clicks, leave it here, if it clicks later, leave it in tomorrows diary….or next weeks. But please think about it and participate if you can. Simplify already took a shot at it, but you do NOT have to use his form or get as in depth, ALL responses are welcome. And let me remind you that The Declaration Of Independence is classified as a manifesto!

Many people were kind enough to respond with lists of their top issues and principles, but of course, the more folks who respond the better a sampling we get.

If you are so inclined, submit your priorities below….but remember, you will have more opportunities to do so and the more time you spend figuring out what is really important to you….what it means to YOU to be a progressive ….the better!

We all believe that Progressivism is the solution. Polls have shown that most people agree with the rather nebulous concept of Progressive values. By assembling a list of those values we can point to it and say, look….we want the same things as you. We can defeat the Republican idea that THEY are America, the Real Americans. We can show the voters that in truth, Progressive ideals are ALREADY their ideals too. That the only thing separating us are the wedges and disinformation that the Right Wing has been so successful at perpetrating.

We ARE the center! We ARE America! America just doesn’t know it. This is a way to help show them that simple truth.

Please help if you can.

I got a little out of the news loop when I was on vacation.  Now it’s 3 AM and I have jet lag, so I’m catching up.  The Blackwater stuff keeps piling up, and Media Matters did me the favor of a day-by-day review of what happened with the Rush Limbaugh fiasco.  I see where some MN vets are being denied the GI bill, and that it is apparently okay to deny medical coverage to small, vulnerable children.

Now Bush says “We don’t torture.”  I suppose that depends how one defines “torture.” 

George Carlin talks alot about “euphemisms.”  You know – where they simply replace words that make people uncomfortable, to shade the truth?  So “toilet paper” becomes “bathroom tissue”?  A “mattress” is a “sleep system?”  “Torture” is now “interrogation methods”.

So anyway, the President says we don’t torture, but maybe the shock has just worn off.  Otherwise, how do you explain this commercial?!

(Thanks toNyc Alberts, NYC, who originally saw this commercial on television late at night in a longer version, and finally tracked it down & also wrote about it)

By the way, The New York Times Sunday editorial was entitled |”On Torture and American Values” and contained this statement:

“Once upon a time, it was the United States that urged all nations to obey the letter and the spirit of
international treaties and protect human rights and liberties. The people in much of the world, if not their governments, respected the United States for its values. The Bush  administration has dishonored that history and squandered that respect.”

UPDATE: I posted this after it had been up all day at Democracy Cell Project and I wanted more discussion.  On Nyc’s suggestion, I sent it to the main women at Feministing, who he’d contacted after he first saw it.  I’m headed for Docudharma.  Any other ideas, let me know.  Don’t see comments on here but have gotten some email such as “It’s no better than if it were about child molesting” or “It’s an obvious example of corporate propaganda to soften the image of torture.”

Not to mention:
Ordinary commercials (which are usually in bad taste or have crappy music) are annoying enough….

Have we gotten so low in our degradation scale under the Bush administration that we can make light of torture, the worst thing we can do to our fellow human beings (and other animals on the planet) and casually accept pseudo-torture to sell beauty products…? (Beauty products?!?)

I find the commercial offensive in the extreme. Eeeeeeeeowwww doesn’t begin to describe the mental/emotional recoil I had when watching it.

Gotta go wash out my eyes and disinfect my ears… but how do I get the images and the sounds out of my brain…?

Creepy, in the extreme.

See also Nyc’s blogpost which paralleled mine, at A Pen Warmed In Hell.

Light Emitting Pickle here to bring you the most recent open thread. First, a few words about Pickle Pony Parties:

Please do not recommend a Pony Party when you see one.  There will be another along in a few hours.

As I’d mentioned in the earlier Pony Party, I’m oot and aboot this weekend. Anyone else traveling lately?

(One of these days, I’ll actually figure out how to include YouTube – the series of tubes is tricky – if only the internets were a big truck…)

I just read a comment in Buhdy’s diary from my good friend CD.

I’m done…

I’m done with the meta.

I will post on it no more.

I will refrain from getting sucked in to the meta if at all humanly possible.

I will not post any more on the workings / goings on / antics of pff, MLW, or any other blog except maybe dKos.

I will only post on dKos if it has direct relevance to what we are doing here. But that relevance will (and better be) damned direct. And relevant.

When posting here, I will focus any blogging related topics on this site and this site alone.

If I do post on blogging related topics, they will be in the spirit of positive change and our potential to expand our influence. It will be in the spirit of building our community.

I will not post gossip about any other bloggers.

I will not play these games any longer.

I’m done.

From this moment on.

I make this pledge for the next 12 months at least. I make this pledge realizing this is the equivalent of 12 years in blogging time.

Anyone with me?

This is an OPEN THREAD. Here are four stories in the news at 4 o’clock to get you started.

1. Another day, another report on how the Bush administration is helping al Qaeda. Reuters reports Report says war on terror is fueling al Qaeda. “The ‘war on terror’ is failing and instead fueling an increase in support for extremist Islamist movements” according to a report by the Oxford Research Group (ORG).

   If the al Qaeda movement is to be countered, then the roots of its support must be understood and systematically undercut,” said Paul Rogers, the report’s author and professor of global peace studies at Bradford University in northern England.

   “Combined with conventional policing and security measures, al Qaeda can be contained and minimized but this will require a change in policy at every level.”

   He described the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq as a “disastrous mistake” which had helped establish a “most valued jihadist combat training zone” for al Qaeda supporters.

   The report recommends immediate redeployment from Iraq and intensifying diplomacy in the region, including with Iran and Syria. Rogers said it will take “at least 10 years to make up for the mistakes made since 9/11.

   “Going to war with Iran”, he said, “will make matters far worse, playing directly into the hands of extreme elements and adding greatly to the violence across the region. Whatever the problems with Iran, war should be avoided at all costs.”

   I suspect no one will pay any attention to this study because the author is a professor of peace studies and thinks “war should be avoided at all costs”. BBC News reports on the ORG study as well, covering the same ground, but adds the “report said al-Qaeda had benefited from the removal of the Taleban regime in Afghanistan by coalition forces. The terror network got a propaganda boost from the extraordinary rendition and detention of terrorism suspects, it said.” Any bets on if we’ll see any mention of this report from the traditional media in America?

2. Some Iraqi leaders have given up trying to reconcile their difference. Joshua Partlow reports for the Washington Post that Top Iraqis pull back from key U.S. goal.

   Iraqi leaders argue that sectarian animosity is entrenched in the structure of their government. Instead of reconciliation, they now stress alternative and perhaps more attainable goals: streamlining the government bureaucracy, placing experienced technocrats in positions of authority and improving the dismal record of providing basic services…

   Legislation to manage the oil sector, the country’s most valuable natural resource, and to bring former Baath Party members back into the government have not made it through the divided parliament. The U.S. military’s latest hope for grass-roots reconciliation, the recruitment of Sunni tribesmen into the Iraqi police force, was denounced last week in stark terms by Iraq’s leading coalition of Shiite lawmakers.

   Oh, and no one could have predicted the following when the U.S. military began arming locals to “fight” “al Qaeda in Iraq”.

   Some potential progress toward reconciliation has run into recent trouble. The U.S. effort to recruit Sunni tribesmen to join the police force and fight the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq was strongly opposed last week by Shiite officials, who asserted that the Sunni recruits were killing innocent people under the guise of fighting insurgents.

   “We demand that the American administration stop this adventure, which is rejected by all the sons of the people and its national political powers,” the leading Shiite political coalition said in a statement. “Their elements are criminals who cannot be trusted or relied upon.”

Four at Four continues below the fold with stories on:

3. Today’s “Guns of Greed” starring Blackwater CEO Erik Prince as Bruce Wayne, er Batman.

4. Ocean wave energy generation in the Pacific Northwest.

Plus a bonus story about Mad Max’s Wind Farm in Australia. So jump below the fold, the Bat-Signal is on.

3. Today’s “Guns of Greed” — an overview of Blackwater and mercenaries in the news.

• James Glanz and Alissa Rubin of The New York Times reports Iraq says Blackwater shootings are ‘murder’. “The Iraqi prime minister’s office said Sunday that the government’s investigation had determined that Blackwater USA private security guards who shot Iraqi civilians three weeks ago in a Baghdad square sprayed gunfire in nearly every direction, committed ‘deliberate murder’ and should be punished accordingly.”

  A statement by the prime minister’s spokesman indicate Iraq considers their investigation completed. Their conclusions contradict Blackwater’s version of the incident and state unequivocally the shootings were unprovoked. “This is a deliberate crime against civilians. It should be tried in court and the victims should be compensated,” Ali al-Dabbagh said. 17 people were killed and 27 wounded in the shooting.

• In Iraqis tell of guards’ reckless behavior in the Los Angeles Times, Tina Susman reports that the “residents of Hillah await answers and justice in the slayings of two men. They believe those responsible for the deaths were Blackwater employees.”

  On August 13, Hussein Salih Mohammed Rabee, a retired business man was shot by a gunner in a convoy of fast moving SUVs. No one has been helpd accountable for his death. “His sons say the provincial police commander and a U.S. Army officer told them that Blackwater USA… was responsible. Hillah residents held a protest outside the office of an American nongovernmental agency known to use Blackwater guards, waving banners and demanding Blackwater be brought to justice.”

  “This company killed my father and left him on the street,” said one of Rabee’s sons, Bahaa Hussein Salih Rabee, the head of the physics department at Babil University in Hillah…

  Safa Rabee says the U.S. military offered him and his family financial compensation, but they do not want money. “I said, do you think $100 million can return my father? Do you think that can help?” he recalled telling the Army officer.

• Anne Krueger of the San Diego Union-Tribune reports Blackwater foes begin fight with their feet. “Wearing a bright green ‘Stop Blackwater’ T-shirt, Rep. Bob Filner urged about 200 protesters yesterday to keep up their fight against Blackwater USA’s plans to build a military and law enforcement training center in the backcountry community of Potrero,” California. “Filner has proposed a bill in Congress that would allow mercenary training only on military bases… Blackwater’s plans for a training center have aroused intense controversy in Potrero and beyond.”

• According to Stars and Stripes, Blackwater guard ballistic missile defense systems in the tiny town of Shariki, Japan. Where “100 or so government contractors and two U.S. Army soldiers” operate AN/TPY-2 radar that “points high-powered radio waves westward toward mainland Asia to hunt for enemy missiles headed east toward America or its allies.”

  “In all honesty, I have beat up the contractors a lot about making their people drive correctly,” [Capt. Will Hunter] says while driving on a narrow two-lane road through rice paddies…

  It’s hard to have absolute control, however, over a workforce that reports to a private company rather than a company commander, he says.

  The Americans work for Raytheon and Chenega Blackwater Solutions, who, respectively, run the missile radar and provide security at the base.

  Hat tip Wired News: Blackwater: Japan’s Missile Defense Force.

• While covering a lot of ground already known, James Risen’s story for The New York Times on Erik Prince, Blackwater Chief at Nexus of Military and Business, does bring a few intersting quotes and I am still curious to how Prince was able to leave the Navy? “After college he made it into the Navy Seals following Officer Candidate School, and seemed eager to pursue a military career. But the death of his father, and the illness of Mr. Prince’s first wife, who later died of cancer, intervened, and he left the Navy.”

  Robert Young Pelton, an author and journalist who has interviewed Prince “extensively” said “I think that he thinks he is like Bruce Wayne in Batman.”

  “Bruce Wayne lives in a mansion and then at night he is out in the bat cave with the Batmobile. And that is Erik. I think he is conflicted.”

  … Mr. Pelton said it would be wrong to assume that Mr. Prince’s political connections account for his success. “It is a mistake to characterize him as his father, or by the right-wing groups his father supported,” Mr. Pelton said. “Politically, I think he is more of a libertarian. He hates government sloth, even as his company gets most of its business from the government.”

  If this is really true, then — Holy comic book meglomania, Batman!

4. The Seattle Times reports that Tapping tidal energy is the wave of the future. Science reporter Sandi Doughton writes:

   

   The future of clean power in the Northwest may look like the 75-foot-tall yellow buoy now bobbing like a cork in the waves off the Oregon coast.

   Or maybe it will more closely resemble a gargantuan red snake, riding the swells and capturing their energy. It might even take the form of underwater sails rigged to tap the power of the tides.

   Each design is a horse in the race to wring kilowatts from the restless motion of the sea — and make money doing it. Several of the contenders will be tested in the waters off Washington and Oregon in the coming months and years, as inventors and entrepreneurs jockey for dominance in a field so new some compare it to aviation in the era of the Wright brothers.

   “It’s the Kitty Hawk days for tidal energy,” said Craig Collar, of the Snohomish County Public Utility District, which already has permits for trial runs in several Puget Sound straits famed for their rushing tides.

5. Wendy Frew, the environmental reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald brings news of a Huge wind farm for Mad Max country. “A giant A giant $2 billion wind farm proposed for western NSW could double the number of turbines operating in Australia and provide as much electricity as a large coal-fired power plant. Epuron, a subsidiary of the German renewable energy group Conergy AG, will today announce plans to build as many as 500 turbines, generating enough electricity for 400,000 homes. They would be built on the ranges that rise around the Mundi Mundi plains, north-west of Broken Hill.” The site is nearby where Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior was filmed.

   4@4 artist interpretation of the Mad Max Wind Farm.

So, what else is happening?

This is not about anything in particular, it’s just a story.

Years ago, I got mice in my house. It was a cold, wet winter, and I live by a stream, and they discovered a place that was warm and dry. They invited themselves in. They sometimes left tiny packages for me to clean up. I sometimes spied them scurrying around, at night. One startled a woman I was getting to know. She was pretty cute. The mice were becoming annoying.

I’m not into killing things. I bought some Hav-a-Hart traps, and actually caught several of the mice. Whenever I did, I drove out to an open field, and set them free. It didn’t matter. They kept coming in. I think they may have had email or PM capabilities. Anyway, the word was out that my house was warm and dry and that I didn’t kill them. After a while, I started to think I should. But I didn’t.

Eventually, I made a thorough inspection of the outside of my home, and figured out how they were getting in. I plugged the holes. Problem solved. I didn’t kill any of them, and they stopped bothering me.

It was a cold, wet winter, and I don’t know what happened to the mice. I have neighbors. Maybe they invaded their homes. Judging from the number of mice, though, my house wasn’t essential to their survival. It was just easy.

I suppose I could feel badly for not having been more friendly and welcoming to the mice. I don’t.

Light Emitting Pickle here to bring you the most recent open thread. First, a few words about Pickle Pony Parties:

Please do not recommend a Pony Party when you see one.  There will be another along in a few hours.

Today is Canadian Thanksgiving (earlier harvest up here, eh? Sure beats celebrating Columbus Day).

This weekend is also my wedding anniversary, so I am currently returning from a nice weekend on the west coast of Vancouver Island – I’ve been oot and aboot!

Happy open thread!